Yelp Announce Plans To Allow Business Owners To Respond To Negative Comments
Review sites, Yelp.com and Yelp.co.uk have announced plans to allow business owners to respond to negative comments on the site
Previously, there was no way for business owners to answer back to their critics. This forced many small business owners to resort to bizarre tactics in order to put their point across. In the USA, Craig Stoll, co-owner of Pizzeria Delfina in San Francisco, outfits his servers in T-shirts emblazoned with quotes from the restaurant’s harshest critics.
Many small business owners are unsure if the new policy at Yelp with actually benefit their business or prove harmful. Sarah Dunbar, owner of Pretty Penny, a vintage clothing says she makes a point of responding privately to each critical review. “If someone gives Home Depot a two-star review, I don’t think it really matters,” says Dunbar. “But it does matter for community-based businesses.” Dunbar says getting back to her online critics is just good business sense. “If there’s a legitimate complaint, I want to know how we can make it right for them,” she says.
While contacting people who have left negative reviews often resulted in new positive reviews being left, many users on Yelp considered this as “abusing the system”. For small businesses services such as Yelp and other local review sites can have a massive impact on business. These sites are often the first place where somewhere will hear about a local business.
The new system on Yelp will make it important that business owners take care over how they respond to comments. Small business insurance will protect a company, but it is still necessary to ensure that libel laws are not broken. Internet business libel can have serious repercussions for any business.
Small business owners need to make sure they have picked the correct small business insurance so that their company is fully protected from any legal action.
